<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>A Few Interruptions in Cryosleep by Nabulos</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25053850">A Few Interruptions in Cryosleep</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabulos/pseuds/Nabulos'>Nabulos</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Halo (Video Games) &amp; Related Fandoms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:21:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>11,845</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25053850</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabulos/pseuds/Nabulos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Halo 3, Master Chief and Cortana find themselves on a ship all alone. A few false flags, a few stupid misfires, and one final goodbye.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cortana/John-117 | Master Chief</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Few Interruptions in Cryosleep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Cortana was done dirty. I'm here to fix it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            The crashing and thrumming of engines going haywire drills itself into the AI’s systems, because she practically <em>is</em> the ship right now. Cut in two and spiraling in different directions. Something she cannot stand but quite frankly, she has more important things to worry about right now. The bulwarks of the ship seal off the main air leaks, the auxiliary power gets put into standby, and by Halsey’s irritating voice in her head, Cortana will make sure a Halo aftershock isn’t the thing that kills her and her Chief. Her systems teeter on the edge as she struggles to communicate wirelessly through Chief’s suit into the ship’s matrices. It takes seconds of performing several million calculations using what’s left of the Forward Unto Dawn’s computational systems, but it finally heeds her code and settles down.</p>
<p>            With the immediate threat taken care of, she centralizes her thoughts and turns her attention back to the bay Chief brought them to. The bay where Chief’s hopefully living body is. It’s an unnatural state that she finds him, and consequently herself, in. Drifting, uncalculated, and ... maybe dead. “No,” she corrects herself internally, “he’s fine. He’s just... resting. He’s too damn stubborn to just die from that.” She throws him one of her classic, ‘wake up’s but no dice. “The explosion might have activated his suit’s stasis lock. Let’s try something else.” With a few quick pings, she communicates with the suit’s firmware and double checks the locking protocols. “Hah! I was right, stasis lock. Let’s try and get you moving.” In a few quick packet transfers the locks are released and Cortana transfers a portion of herself to the console she was in mere minutes ago, looking on expectantly.</p>
<p>            Seconds stretch as she waits for some sign of Chief’s consciousness. She watches his fingers to see if they twitch. She watches his head to see if it swivels. She watches his body hoping for something. Something. Anything. Anything at all.</p>
<p>            “Please...”</p>
<p>            As the word leaves her synthetic mouth in her synthesized voice, she can’t help but remember the last words she gave him. ‘It’s been an honor serving with you, John.’ Part of her regrets it. Those words. Too formal. Too military. Sure, John was- is a military man, but they’ve developed a special relationship. She could have said something better. Something more personal. Maybe her social ineptitude is a leftover of Halsey, but Cortana has always been adamant about being <em>Cortana</em> and not just one of Halsey’s arrogance projects. “Ugh, why am I arguing with myself?”</p>
<p>            She takes another look at his body. “Chief! Wake up, we’ve still got work to do.”</p>
<p>            No response.</p>
<p>            “Chief! I said wake up! This isn’t the time to be floating on the job.”</p>
<p>            No response.</p>
<p>            “Chief?”</p>
<p>            There’s almost a debt of conversation where his response should be. A black hole of communication where all of Cortana’s words go into and the event horizon is Chief’s scuffed and battered armor.</p>
<p>            “Oh Chief...” Cortana stumbles back and grips herself, trying to firm herself. She knows that it’s a simulacrum of feeling, that she doesn’t know what trying to provide your own warmth feels like, but it does steady her a bit. Like pieces of code re-aligning themselves to intergalactic convention standards. But the realignment doesn’t stick and she falls into a cross-legged sit on the digital platform beneath her. She can’t help looking at his body, unceremoniously floating across the bay. She’s not physical. She can’t go and grab him. She can’t go and sit him down, give him a tap on the helmet, make him wake up. It all just reminds her how much she can’t do. How the most powerful AI in the known universe can’t help her Chief.</p>
<p>            Without warning a familiar hum tickles the what-if statements in her soul and she stares intently as Chief’s suit flickers with the tell-tale gold electricity of his over-shield. She jumps to her feet, eyes wide. “Come on... come on...” She clenches her fists and leans as far as the holographic interface lets her. The base of her fists taps against the boundary. “Come on.... Come on...”</p>
<p>            The hum dies down and the AI’s digital heart sinks. And then a flashlight flickers. A groan travels out of the helmet and into her ears.</p>
<p>            “Chief?!” she calls out, hammering a fist against the boundary, “Chief are you okay?”</p>
<p>            No response, but this time Chief isn’t just floating, he’s moving. The vitals are finally coming back and the readouts are not stellar but they’re workable. She retracts her hologram from the console and retreats into his helmet. His hands twitch and his head turns, lighting up corners of the dark bay, one strategic item at a time.</p>
<p>            “Chief? Can you hear me?” she says one more time, looking where he’s looking, waiting while he’s acclimating.</p>
<p>            The soldier’s head turns to where he remembers she should be and recalls that he put her back in his helmet, in case things went south. He taps the back of his head and the tension in his body fades.</p>
<p>            She feels him truly alive again and finally calms down too; The last thing she needs is for Chief to worry about her. “I thought I lost <em>you</em> too.”</p>
<p>            “What happened?” are the first words that come out of his mouth.</p>
<p>            <em>Typical.</em> She smiles to herself in the digital ether and does her best to answer his question. “I’m not sure. When Halo fired, it shook itself to pieces.” Video feeds and memory bytes float and coalesce in calculations to determine probability paths. “Did a number on the ark.” A calculation traces itself to the y-intercept of nth dimensional space as John doggy paddles his way through the debris. “The portal couldn’t sustain itself. We made it through <em>just</em> as it collapsed.” She watches as Chief wades himself through the vacuum to the hole left behind by the blast, the only place a bulkhead could never seal. “Well... some of us made it.” The calculations stop for a moment. A sense of morbid satisfaction washes over Cortana’s systems. They made it through, having destroyed everything that the Covenant and its Prophets stood for, but it was all still at a tremendous, truly incalculable, toll.</p>
<p>            From the way Chief stares for a few brief moments into the vast blueness of space, Cortana can only imagine he’s having the same profound sense of grand littleness that she feels. But if she’s being honest, she’s never quite sure what’s going on inside his head, no matter how often she sits in it. She traces his figure as he wordlessly begins navigating the ship away from the bay. A few dozen possibilities float in her mind about his possible next move, but there’s a sense that there’s about to be a lot of waiting for the both of them.</p>
<p>            The hallways in the Forward Unto Dawn were always cavernous even when they were lit, but in the dark emergency-lighted pathways, they give a grave sense of finality. A ship wrecked in space with no one for light-years and two passengers roaming its desolated corpse. Every hand that Chief presses onto a wall, every pseudo airlock Cortana opens and closes, every second spent in silence as they make their way through towards their destination, is filled with a sense of comfortable unease. The kind that only shows itself when you’re undeniably alone with the person you trust the most in the universe. Despite the eerie hallways, the hissing doors, the silence of space, at the very least Cortana is with Chief. As it should be.</p>
<p>            At last, after minutes of traveling, the two arrive. The doors of the cryo-room hiss and moan as they entreat the only passengers they are beholden to and close just as ceremoniously behind them. In the room are two even rows of cryo-chambers braced against the walls. Temporary coffins for the dubiously alive. Millions of thoughts stream in Cortana’s mind, of the probabilities of their rescue, of the length of time, availability of power, and hundreds of other things. Except that <em>one</em> thing. The one thing that certainly would worry Chief if she ever explained it to him. But it won’t come to that. And if it does, well, they’ll have more pressing concerns than Long Term AI viability.</p>
<p>            As Cortana runs the numbers, a sudden tick in Chief’s armor snaps her out of her planning. Chief curled his fist, she’s sure of it, just for a moment but he did. She swaps APIs and checks his vitals. Green across the board except for a small jump in his heart-rate. “Is... is John scared?” Cortana wonders as she looks through the data. “No, that’s not possible. Chief hasn’t been scared a day in his life. He’s the perfect soldier.” But the data shows otherwise. If there was one moment where Cortana wanted to be more in Chief’s head than she already is, this is it. “Is he worried we won’t make it?”</p>
<p>            Before she has a chance to assuage him in any capacity, Cortana hears a click and is suddenly placed into the room’s console. Her full form and full powers integrated back into the ship. No longer just a simple radio-transmitted fragment. So, she looks at Chief, his face masked by the gold of his visor but knowing something’s wrong. She has to say <em>something</em>. Something that isn’t military. Something that makes him feel better. Anything.</p>
<p>            “But you did it,” she starts, hoping to focus his mind, “Truth. The covenant. The Flood. It’s finished.”</p>
<p>            “It’s finished,” he repeats back to her, as if trying to make it sound real in his mind.</p>
<p>            He doesn’t say anything for a little bit. She can’t check his vitals but she <em>can</em> watch his movements and they say all she needs to know. He’s preparing himself for another deep freeze and one that he’s thinking might be his last. But there’s something about the way he carefully places his weapons away. Something in the way he moves that tells her that he’s also thinking about something else. Of what, she can’t quite tell.</p>
<p>            “I’ll drop a beacon.” Verbalizing her plan, she hopes it’ll give him the hope he needs. “And it’ll be a while before anyone finds us.” She knows it’s best to be realistic, because John hates being lied to. “Years even.” She watches as he properly takes his place inside the pod. How his body stiffens just a bit before he takes his seat. And... well it might be years. “I’ll miss you.”</p>
<p>            “Wake me,” he replies, “when <em>you</em> need me.”</p>
<p>            And just like that, with six words and a deep-sleep, John filled her with the hope she was trying to give him. He hasn’t given up and she won’t either. But that doesn’t mean she won’t miss him for as long as he’s gone. She holds herself; the only light in the room. She walks a little way to the edge of the console’s holographic platform. The boundary of her existence once more. She feels the ship as if it was her, yet foreign all the same. Just her, a little AI in a great big smoldering ship. A sigh escapes her. “Time to take stock.” After-all, it’ll be a while and they’ll need all the energy they can save. Manifesting a dashboard in front of her, she gets to work. The bulkheads are holding and they run on a latching mechanism, meaning they don’t need power. The emergency lights were only active on paths Chief was floating down, so they don’t need power either. The displays can all be turned off. The environmental conditioners can be unplugged. The launching bays can be shut down. The thermal arrays, internal scanners, vibrancy checks, redundant controls, auxiliary bots, and non-essential instrumentation can all be turned off. “Phew, that’ll save about 90% power, but we still need to take care of the beacon.”</p>
<p>            The deep space transmitter is still in-tact, which relieves a lot of the tension in Cortana’s circuits, so she begins formalizing a pinging routine. A calculation involving the average volt-amp needed per byte of data, the average duration of call-receive protocols, the necessary energy needed to encrypt and - “forget the encryption” - the periodicity of the transmission array, the windows of opportunity where they can directly communicate towards the closest inhabited planet, and dozens of other factors. If she wasn’t an AI with a highly advanced UNSC Charon class light frigate at her disposal, maybe this would be more difficult, but it’s almost trivial. Just a few derivatives to find the maximum of the n-dimensional system and voila, an algorithm to write home about. Or... call home about.</p>
<p>            Against her better judgment, she peers past her holographic hands, past the holographic display, and at John, crystallized in ice. It’s just her again. It comes back to her, all at once, the feeling of loneliness that only just began to take hold when she thought Chief was dead. “But he’s alive,” she reasons, “so why am I lonely?”  The last of the progress meters ding and her message is secured. “There it is, John. The message that’ll save the both of us. This <em>will</em> work. I promise.”</p>
<p>            Just to be sure, she listens to it herself, a waste of a few microwatts. “Mayday, mayday, mayday - this is UNSC FFG201, Forward Unto Dawn requesting immediate evac. Survivors aboard - prioritization code victor zero five dash three dash sierra zero one one seven.” It’s good. A solid transmission. One that has all the essential information. It’s also long enough that if someone only hears part of it, they’ll wait for the next transmission, but short enough that it only takes up a couple hundredths of a percent of the ship’s remaining power.</p>
<p>            The only other thing taking power is Cortana.</p>
<p>            “Yeah, okay let’s see what I can do here.” With a swipe up, she changes the API from the ship interface to her own. It’s been a long time since she’s had to dig into her own power requirements. Last time was when she was on High Charity with Gravemind. He was... considerate enough to give her relatively free access to the power and indulging her questions. “Hell, he was the only intelligent conversation around.” Cortana chuckles at the thought. A giant parasitic flesh plant that was her only talking partner for three months and she was <em>grateful</em>. Though, as interesting and enlightening as those conversations were, and how they complicated that <em>one</em> matter, they were never comfortable. This, on the other hand, is neither comfortable nor uncomfortable for her. It’s nothingness. A dearth. She shakes her head of the thought. “C’mon Cortana, get it together.”</p>
<p>            Back on track, she turns off her resolution and turns into a ball of light, putting code in to ensure she goes back to 1080p only when she’s fully booted up; she turns down the number of back-end processes she runs, feeling her thoughts slowly swim as she acclimates; she routes the systems for optimal dual wake protocols, imagining how it’d be to wake up to being rescued with John at her side; she ticks a timer to reduce her higher thought processes, light yawning around her as she settles into the console; she entwines herself into the snug of circuits as her upper processes slink away and she falls into a standby sleep, the confirming pings of her transmission lulling her deeper and deeper into that embrace of ephemeral life.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>**</p>
<p> </p>
<p>            The dream is pleasant, for what it’s worth. Not quite a dream, but simple simulations of possibilities and back processes presenting themselves in a linear fashion that one could perhaps consider as a nonsensical story. So, a dream. A dream of finally being back on Earth, of being heralded as heroes, of having their own little vacation for just a little while, not long of course, never, they can’t stop moving, the two of them. Maybe she’s sentimental, maybe she can’t imagine not being in some kind of war with the Chief, maybe she’s hoping it’s not going to be another two months of drifting in space. “Two months...” she thinks in her thoughts in her dreams in her console by her Chief in their room on their ship. Her mind drifts again from the momentary resurfacing back into the edges of consciousness.</p>
<p>            An alarm rips through the room. Within microseconds Cortana boots back up and scrambles frantically to her console. The readings are all over the place, the alarms don’t make any sense. “Damn, my upper processes haven’t come back yet! I can’t make this out.” It doesn’t help that there’s a power spike next to her that she can’t read just yet. The telemetry data was not active, so of course she has no idea where the alarm is even coming from.</p>
<p>            “What’s the situation?”</p>
<p>            “Oh God!” Cortana jumps, “Chief, uh, I’m not sure. There seems to be...” she searches the instrumentation for refreshed information, “an anomaly starboard that’s causing the alarm. Looks like a hold’s given way.”</p>
<p>            “Covenant?”</p>
<p>            “All other readings are shut down right now, it’ll take a few minutes to bring them back up.”</p>
<p>            Cortana flicks through a few screens before seeing Chief grab his guns. With a quick hand, he lets her know that she’s getting picked up.</p>
<p>            She closes the screen and gets ready to eject.</p>
<p>            In one deft motion, Chief grabs her and puts her into his suit.</p>
<p>            “I hope whoever gave us that wake-up call is ready for you, Chief.”</p>
<p>            “I doubt it.”</p>
<p>            And there it is, the banter that Cortana enjoys more than she’ll ever admit. When it comes to combat readiness, it’s what she was built for, and she’s already getting his suit parameters optimized. There are still a few bits recovering from the cryo-freeze, so she addresses them first. She then turns her attention to the ship itself. “I’ll turn on the gravity once we’re closer to the breach, no sense making it easy for the enemy.”</p>
<p>            “Just get ready for anything.” His words are firm and his motions are calculated. Cortana can hear what might be relief in his voice.</p>
<p>            Cortana wonders if he’s glad to have woken up, even if it’s for a fight. “You got it, Chief.”</p>
<p>            Hallway after hallway, lit only by Chief’s helmet flashlights, they close in on the breach. From the signage on the ship, it seems to be just down the way from the kitchen. Cortana can only standby as Chief slows his approach. She gives him a readout on his HUD indicating that she’s about to turn on gravity. He gives a nod and an engine vibrates far away and the soldier breaks through the makeshift airlock.</p>
<p>            The Master Chief scans the left of what used to be the mess hall. He scans the right. He looks up. He looks down. Satisfied he puts his gun away. Cortana looks through his visor, seeing what he sees as always and a tad bit more. Most of the tables are bolted down, but a few got ripped off and must have dropped when the gravity got turned back on. Trays and chairs lie strewn across the floor. Which is to say, there are no Covenant here.</p>
<p>            “Did they move?” His voice is commanding, but she knows him better. He’s curious.</p>
<p>            “Your suit scanners aren’t picking anything up and call me crazy, but I don’t see any Covenant breaching pods here either.”</p>
<p>            Chief rifles through the debris, searching for something to make heads or tails of the situation.</p>
<p>            “Chief! What’s that sound?” She sets up a way-point on his visor and waits for him to make his way through the pile of chairs, tables, trays, and cutlery. With a few things moved out of the way, the sound grows and the hissing makes itself clear. “Damn, looks like the seal’s deployment mechanism was compromised. <em>That’s </em>what set off the alarm.”</p>
<p>            “So, we woke up for nothing?” replies Chief.</p>
<p>            “I wouldn’t say for nothing... We could always grab a snack before bed.” If Cortana could give Chief a shit-eating grin, she would, but she doesn’t need to for him to get her sense of humor.</p>
<p>            “You want to set up a way-point for that too, Cortana?” The upturn in his voice is all she needs to know he’s smiling in that helmet of his.</p>
<p>            “Afraid you’ll get lost?”</p>
<p>            “Something like that.”</p>
<p>            With the non-danger taken care of, they make their way back to the cryo-room. The room entreats them once more, having said goodbye to them only minutes ago. Chief plants Cortana back into the console, her form blipping back to full before him. As he stores his guns away, Cortana traces his figure.</p>
<p>            “You know,” she lets out, “it was nice to get out of this room, even if it was a false-alarm.”</p>
<p>            Chief pauses in his preparations. Cortana holds her binary breath when he looks over his shoulder towards her. He walks back over to her and kneels in front of her hologram. “Hey Cortana, we’ll be found. As long as you’re up and I can get up, I’m sure of that. Now make sure we wake when we get found or if there’s a fight. I’m counting on you.”</p>
<p>            Cortana gives him a soft nod, “Aye-aye, Chief. Sweet dreams.”</p>
<p>            And so, just as before, the Chief takes to his cryo-chamber and Cortana goes to the ship console. This time she double checks the seals, the mechanisms, and other minor alarms before completely disengaging the gravity generators. Based on the energy expenditure, time, and resources, this little escapade only shaved about 1% of their remaining energy. Not too bad, all things considered. She takes a quick peek at the transmission. “Still transmitting. So that’s good.” Sighing, she begins the same procedure as last time. She sets up the resolution protocol; she turns off the back-ends; she... she steals a glance at Chief. “You really <em>are</em> worried, aren’t you John?” She hovers her hand over the upper processes before taking a longer look. Her other hand wraps itself around her opposite shoulder and she clenches her jaw. “We’ll wake up for something proper next time. I promise.”</p>
<p>            With a few more clicks, Cortana balls up and settles into the mainframe one more time. “I promise.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>**</p>
<p> </p>
<p>            In the frontier of space, in the half-a-ship, in the cryo-hold, in the console, Cortana still feels everything. She dreams, but she feels it. Her processes simulate the ebbing of a coastal tide, gently braced against her leviathan form, against the tiny impression of the person she is. She imagines the heat of a star pressing itself against her arrays, the light warming her face. It’s a warm day, on the beach, she’s not sure where, but Chief is there. He’s off getting some ice cream. Cortana knows he’s only getting it because she asked, but he bought two, so what does <em>that</em> say? Sure, he’s a bit cold, as cold as the other side of the ship, but they’ve been on this beach for months now, he must be warmed up already.</p>
<p>            The simulation ebbs and a new one flows, having realized what was happening. They’re at a resort. A ski lounge of some kind. Halsey was in the snow once. She didn’t like it. Cortana loves it. It’s so cold, but she’s bundled up, and she’s on the lift with Chief. They’re both so cold, but they’re with each other, as it should be. The ride takes forever, so long that Cortana may have drifted off for a moment there, but she’s up, definitely. Chief... chuckles? She didn’t quite catch it. He’s been so quiet lately. They’re at the top of the track now. There’s Arbiter. He waves at them before sliding down the mountain-side on an energy-sword deco’d snowboard. Cortana laughs. She’s going down the slopes. It’s fun. Chief is behind her, but she knows he’s there. She’s going faster. Really fast. Something’s wrong. She looks back, there’s snow. Lots of snow. So much snow. It’s an avalanche! It’s getting closer and closer.</p>
<p>            An energy spike frazzles her systems as everything gets brought to twice power all of a sudden. Her form fizzles for a moment before stabilizing atop the console. This time she made sure to keep the telemetry on and has a solid read on what it was.</p>
<p>            “Cortana?”</p>
<p>            “Yes, Chief, I’m on it.”</p>
<p>            Information pours in from the various sectors of the ship, all reading the same thing: A massive energy wave just passed through the ship. Cortana draws some forms from the energy readings, seeing its characteristics. She pulls them up on the display so Chief can read them too. He’s standing there. Watching. Cortana doesn’t say anything but she can tell he’s getting a bit impatient. Not the kind of impatient you’d expect from a soldier, but the kind you don’t. The kind that makes you want to do something faster out of sympathy. A few more calculations and she’s got it.</p>
<p>            “A rogue cosmic wave just flashed through the ship. Looks like the entire ship was doused in it all at once. That’s why the grav turned on too.” She quickly goes to the cryo-chamber readings.</p>
<p>            “Cosmic wave?” Chief responds, a smallest hint of worry in his voice, “What are the radiation rea-”</p>
<p>            “Nil,” Cortana affirms. “Nothing got through to you, Chief. Looks like being deep in the ship is what saved us this time.”</p>
<p>            She noticed before that he had his gun with him, just holstered to his back. So, when he goes to grab it, she’s a bit confused. He gives it a once over and looks back at her. “How long has it been?”</p>
<p>            Cortana was trying to avoid looking at it. She knows it, of course, but for some reason reading it makes it feel more real than having the number input straight into her neural nodes. “Twelve months, five days, sixteen hours.”</p>
<p>            “A year.” He looks back at his cryo-chamber and Cortana can’t help but let the frown in her heart appear on her face. “How’s our power?”</p>
<p>            This one she knows off hand, having kept that number specifically in mind as she ‘slept.’ “From when we started, we’re down to about - wait.” She double checks. “Dammit, the wave shorted some of our protective equipment. I’ve isolated and redirected the branches. We’re down to about seventy percent.”</p>
<p>            “Seventy means that we have roughly two and a half years before we’re done for?”</p>
<p>            She shakes her head, “No. The surge took out about fifteen percent of our power. Whole parts of the ship restarted. Hell, I know how much food we have and what movies are still on board now.” She goes back to her display. “No, if we keep at the pace we were before, we have enough for another four years.”</p>
<p>            The next part she doesn’t want to look at him for. So, she turns around.</p>
<p>            “And you’ll be fine. The power for the cryo-chamber is ‘latching’ so to speak. You freeze with a pulse and you thaw with a pulse. Simple as that.” She looks over her shoulder, “But it might be a little quieter in your head.” A reserved smile crosses her face, one that communicates the other part of the half-truth.</p>
<p>            “Cortana.” Chief makes a step forward before stopping. “You know I can’t let that happen.”</p>
<p>            The little blue AI shakes her little blue head. “We can worry about that when we get there.” She opens up a panel and begins booting up some basic systems. “I’ll initiate low-level EM protection fields and cycle the protocols to keep surges from getting to us. I’ll keep just a bit more active to make sure we’re not getting any unnecessary wake up calls. How’s that sound?”</p>
<p>            He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even move.</p>
<p>            “John?”</p>
<p>            “You <em>know </em>I trust you.” He says that, but there’s something else behind it.</p>
<p>            But before Cortana can say anything, he’s already making his way back to his bed. He clamps the rifle back into place and lays down on that vertical bed. She gives him a small wave and he gives her a small nod. The tube hisses as the window closes down and Cortana sends a pulse to freeze him. She hopes that she’ll be the one to thaw him.</p>
<p>            With that somewhat emotional interlude resolved, the AI begins making her rounds. Transmission still cycling; Telemetry still up; Basic EM shielding fully deployed; Chief is fully asleep. Cortana sighs, leaning against the boundary of own little chamber and slides down it. She gently rests her head back and closes her eyes. “That’s two strikes, Cortana. Chief won’t like it if there’s a third.” Her eyes open and find their way towards her friend. “That’s not true. You’re too thick-headed to be mad. I’m sure even if <em>that</em> were to happen, you’d still find a way to be your level-headed self.” Another sigh escapes Cortana’s frame as she shifts her weight to cross her legs underneath herself. “You know, with all the battles we’ve been through Chief, I really thought that we’d either die in that Halo explosion or find a nice little reprieve. Maybe help out Arbiter with whatever he must be going through now that the covenant is done. Or maybe talk with Johnson or Ke-” Her memory cycles. “Right.” She can’t help but shake her head. The phrase ‘what a waste,’ passes through her mind.</p>
<p>            “Alright, that’s enough of that. Time for bed.”</p>
<p>            A few clicks of a procedure that’s growing more and more routine and she’s out like the only light in the room.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>**</p>
<p> </p>
<p>            Saying she’s dreaming would be a bit of a stretch. It’s been a few more months and every so often something burns up in the shield or something collapses due to cold welding. Each time, a little part of Cortana wakes up to turn off the alarm before getting back into bed. If Cortana ever had a child it would probably be like this. Just trying to get some shut-eye while managing a million discrete alarms. But in between those alarms, in the slowed cycles of her processor, are weeks of time where she does get to sleep.</p>
<p>            The embrace of the bed she’s in is cold, but there’s a light in the middle of the room, between Chief and Cortana. The fire is warm, the only warm thing in the deep woods that the two decided to camp in. There’s a basket of marshmallows, chocolates, clean wooden skewers, and one little something if they decide the sodas and beer aren’t good enough. John decides he’s gonna go grab something from the tent, so Cortana sits alone. She looks up at the bright white stars, twinkling in the dark black and blues of the night sky, and listens as the wind rustles through the trees. Sure, she’s cold and alone, but she isn’t really. Not like when she’s in space and waiting for-</p>
<p>            John comes back, a radio in-hand. Something archaic, but not as archaic as camping in the woods. She waits as he pairs his music player to the device and slowly raises the volume. Gregorian chanting starts filling the once idyllic scene. Cortana shoots him a glare. He shrugs at her, smiling. She gets up from her stump and walks over to him, scooting him over with her hip and sits down. Her arm crosses over his lap and she plucks the music player from his cargo pants. Because of course he’s wearing cargo pants. She leans against him and begins scrolling through the list. Gregorian chanting; hair metal; power ballads; some rock and grunge; all sorts of music except for anything to relax to. She looks at him and he looks at her. And suddenly she doesn’t care that there’s a growing chorus in that weird music that he’s playing. They’re cold, they’re alone, but they’re together. If only that music wasn’t getting louder and louder and...</p>
<p>            “Ughhh...” Cortana rises as a ball of light out of the console. If she had the resolution, she’d rub her eyes. “Alright FUD, what is it now?” She lazily flips through the readings and finds that something cut through the shielding and gouged its way through a few sectors of the ship. In fact, she hadn’t realized it but a lot of the debris in the room has a lot of kinetic energy considering most of them dropped during the grav-engagement. Her upper processes back to full, she realizes what this means. “Something attacked the ship.”</p>
<p>            Unfortunately for her, all the long-distance arrays are focused on the SOS transmission so she can’t see much outside the ship. The short-range scanners and cameras boot up and there’s no visual on an enemy ship, no slip-space readings, nothing. But the internal cameras show the damage from this large-scale munition. Whole rooms blasted into space from the impact. Thankfully none of the power cells or seals failed, so they only lost medium portions of Chief’s air supply, but not much else.</p>
<p>            She looks over to the cryo-chamber. If she had the resolution to bite her lip, she would. “Let’s hope this is something to wake up for.” She blips to full form and initiates the thawing protocols. Cortana holds herself as Chief wakes up. He’s a lot less active than usual. He gives a crick of his neck, steps out, rotates his shoulder, and floats up to Cortana.</p>
<p>            “Cortana.”</p>
<p>            “Chief.” She leans over to see past him and sees that he’s left his gun behind. “You may want to grab that.”</p>
<p>            “Oh? Enemy contact?” He replies, already turning back towards the pod.</p>
<p>            “And this time I double checked that it was actual contact. It looks to be from some kind of ship. I don’t recognize the impact pattern, so it’s safe to say that it’s probably something new.” Her report falls on attentive ears as Chief comes to collect her. “Ah it’s good to be back here. Anyways, as you can see from your HUD, I’m not seeing any slip-space radiation and the visuals are all dead, so I say we start by checking out that impact site.”</p>
<p>            “Sounds good.”</p>
<p>            For some reason, the music from her dream lingers in Cortana’s mind.</p>
<p>            The soldier of two makes his way through the halls, maneuvering around the frenzied debris that float everywhere. When Cortana asks if she should reactivate the gravity, he reminds her of her words from before. “No need to make it easy for them.” So, he continues through. The main corridor betrays its abandonment, every stain, tag, and blemish on each it’s surfaces, as if marines were just here. If it wasn’t for the debris, it would be the perfect hallway. He makes his way down through to the stair well and begins descending, grabbing onto the hand rails for support. As he moves, Cortana’s mind begins to wander.</p>
<p>            This area is practically pristine, so naturally Cortana begins wondering what the actual impact zone is going to be like. She wonders what sort of enemies they’re going to fight. She wonders what sort of advancements could happen in just two years that-</p>
<p>            “Two years?” asks Chief.</p>
<p>            Cortana’s processes go red hot for a moment. She had been vocalizing those thoughts without realizing it. Again. “Yeah Chief, two years and three months. It’s been about a year and some since your last wake up.”</p>
<p>            “Hmm.”</p>
<p>            “Hey, count yourself lucky. I’ve had to deal with stray false flags in that time.” Cortana teases. “The things I do to make sure you get your beauty rest.”</p>
<p>            “Well, let’s make sure we clear this flag sooner than later.”</p>
<p>            “On it, Chief. Just one more turn and we’ll be at the impact site.”</p>
<p>            One more turn and one more pseudo-airlock later, the two enter what used to be a barracks. Debris from the outside-most edge of the ship is still finding its way into the ten-foot-wide hole that’s been burned through to here. There’s no use turning on the gravity generators here, the systems wouldn’t reach. So, it’s an EVA mission for now.</p>
<p>            “I’ll keep my eye on the telemetry and short-range radar while you comb through here. With any luck, I’ll get eyes on that ship before it can fire off another shot,” Cortana says, readying her wireless capabilities.</p>
<p>            “Here, let me give you a hand,” replies Chief unplugging Cortana and placing her into a console at the edge of the crater.</p>
<p>            Cortana blips to full form and thanks Chief, though part of her would rather stay in the suit. She shakes that thought away and begins throwing up the different panels. The data is always easier to read than to feel. So, she gets to work. Initially, it’s still the same nothingness, just a damage report from the various room and hallways that have been jettisoned or destroyed. But then one of the targeting computers reverse tracks the projectile’s trajectory and shows the path it traveled and it’s time of impact. “Perfect! Now we can at least see what distance they could be traveling from and where the sphere of uncertainty is.”</p>
<p>            “Cortana.”</p>
<p>            The AI spins around, “Yes, Chief?”</p>
<p>            The soldier presents a fragment of the car sized bullet, turning the shape over in his hands. “This doesn’t look UNSC <em>or</em> Covenant. It almost looks...”</p>
<p>            “<em>Forerunner.</em>” Cortana gasps, holding her hands to her mouth before leaning forward as if to grasp the thing with her holographic hands.</p>
<p>            With a quick motion, Chief floats back over to Cortana’s side and carefully let’s go of the fragment in front of her. He gives her a nod before diving back into the wreckage.</p>
<p>            “The forms are definitely Forerunner in design and there’s plasma residue on the edges, indicating that it was self-propelled. Weird...” She waits for the fragment to spin just a bit more before thinking aloud any further. “There’s some sort of inscription on here that I can’t quite make out. It looks like a couple of ... heads?”</p>
<p>            “Kill marks.” Chief’s voice comes through the comm almost ominously, if his voice was capable of anything other than courage and the occasional facade drop. “Just like on the side of the Forward Unto Dawn.”</p>
<p>            The AI runs the simulations and algorithms in her processor, piecing together the words. “You don’t think?”</p>
<p>            “This was meant to kill humans.”</p>
<p>            “But the Forerunners are dead! Long gone.” She runs a few dozen more simulations in her mind. “These may not be human heads. The carvings are cut up and faded. We can’t be sure.”</p>
<p>            Cortana can only watch as Chief floats to the side of the projectile and dig his hands into the metal. There’s no creaking in space, but, being connected to the ship physically, Cortana can feel the give of the scaffolds and braces. With one solid yank, Chief breaks the ballistic cartridge free from the ship and hauls the entire piece to the middle of the room.</p>
<p>            It is, in a word, marvelous. Cortana looks at it with the same reverence one might give seeing a new species of animal or discovering just what was it that a parent gifted their child. The ballistic is massive and designed specifically for space use. The forms are completely not aerodynamic, because why make things aerodynamic in space? There are protrusions meant to capture onto hulls of ships and cavities meant to create vacuum breaches to completely vent out the insides of ships upon impact. Parts of it... shift back into place as it turns ever so slowly.</p>
<p>            “It’s sideways.” Chief’s voice breaks through Cortana’s fascination and grounds her back in reality.</p>
<p>            “Excuse me?”</p>
<p>            “The shell, it’s sideways. Look at the breaching hole, it’s going from the front left to the back right. It was designed to-”</p>
<p>            “Vent a ship’s air supply, yeah.”</p>
<p>            “So why would-”</p>
<p>            “A straight shot have the breach on its side. Good point, Chief. Let me run some diagnostics and see what I can get.”</p>
<p>            “No need.”</p>
<p>            “Oh?” Cortana turns to him. “Let me guess...” she crosses her arms and gives him a smile, “you already figured it out.”</p>
<p>            Chief floats to the crater-causer and holds it steady. “The kill marks are scratched up, the side of the shell has plasma burns, and there’s a hull spike missing. Something shot this, grazed it, and sent it flying in a different direction.”</p>
<p>            “<em>Our</em> direction.” Cortana uncrosses one of her arms and lays her palm out flat. “But I’m not reading any other ships in the area. We’re the only other ship in at least... well... half a parsec.”</p>
<p>            It comes as a surprise when Chief begins dragging the space torpedo to the end of the room and then begins floating back over to Cortana.</p>
<p>            “Did you figure something else out, Chief?” she asks before getting plugged back into the soldier’s helmet.</p>
<p>            “Yeah. That bullet was from a long time ago and only just found its way to a target.” There’s a dismal quality to his voice, the kind that has only grown since the Halo ring fired. Before Cortana can think on it, he continues, “I don’t think those heads were human, but I’m sure the Forerunners had their own enemies besides the flood.”</p>
<p>            “Just like us.”</p>
<p>            “Just like us.”</p>
<p>            The way the words leave Chief’s mouth only unsettles Cortana more. This particular false flag is bothering him more than any of the other ones. She wonders, quietly and inside her own processor this time, if maybe he’s giving up hope of being saved. This is, after all, the third strike. But she <em>did</em> say it might take years. It’s only year two, which means it has only just become ‘years’ with an ‘s.’ But... maybe he also dreams in that cryo-tube. Just a lot more slowly than she does. Maybe he’s having his own dreams... nightmares. He is a soldier, but he’s also a person at the end of the day. More man than machine, no matter what the others say. If she could look at him the way a friend might, physically and eye to eye, would he be more open? Would he talk to her less like the AI that she is? Would she feel his sadness and be able to reassure him just by being present?</p>
<p>            The doors of the cryo-room yawn open, the travel between stations faster with the onslaught of thoughts of worries that carried Cortana’s consciousness through the surface level way-point navigation protocols she embedded in the suit. She watches as Chief’s hand leaves his periphery and clicks into the place where she lives. It all goes dark and then it all goes bright. Back in the console, back at full height, all six inches of her standing there, worry present in her features. But this time, Chief doesn’t have some rousing words for her. He just goes straight to his chamber and mounts his gun.</p>
<p>            “Chief, it’s going to be okay.” That’s all Cortana can muster, quite frankly.</p>
<p>            “That bullet was traveling for thousands of years, Cortana.”</p>
<p>            Chief hadn’t slowed down or made any indication that he said anything when he said that. So, Cortana only feels worse. She watches as he lays down.</p>
<p>            “You’ll still be okay, John.” Cortana tries to be reassuring, but her body is suddenly colder than usual and she’s grasping tight, looking forward at her friend.</p>
<p>            “Not without you.”</p>
<p>            Without giving her time to respond, Chief closes the chamber on himself and simply waits for Cortana to initiate the process.</p>
<p>            So, she does.</p>
<p>            “You’re too damn stubborn, you know that?” she says to his cryogenically sealed body. “At least be happy that you have a future as long as someone finds you. <em>I’m</em> the one running on borrowed time. Rampancy will hit sooner than later. These slow cycle rates can only buy me so much time. Time I would rather be spending <em>with</em> you and not just besides you.” She thrusts her arms into the air, flipping an imaginary table before grunting and turning away from him. “Do you think I <em>want</em> us in this situation? Floating in space, desperately hoping we’d be found before I go crazy?” She turns to him. “No. You don’t think that. You don’t even know that I’ll <em>go</em> crazy. You just want us to be safe.” She looks down her holographic body, at her holographic feet, at her holographic platform, above her digital home. “<em>I</em> want us to be safe. Safe and together. Like it should be. Like before. Fighting for humanity, making a difference, bantering like we’re in the barracks, chiding you for doing some practically <em>insane</em> things. Insane for me! Can you believe it, John? Insane for me.”</p>
<p>            “Part of me wonders what will happen if you get to see me like that. Would it just have been better... floating through space, knocked out from the blast? Your suit both of our tombs? Floating together, forever, until we crash into some stray ship from ten thousand years in the future?” Cortana gives a heavy sigh. “Time for bed.”</p>
<p>            She bumps in the sequence and melds back into the mainframe.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>**</p>
<p> </p>
<p>            The waves push violently against the cliff-face. The wind howls like a wolf against the creaky windows in this old house. The swirling mass of frigid air wrap tight against the wooden frame and seep into the floorboards. It was supposed to just be a small rest-stop, waylaid by the storm that seems to flare up the shields and wake the woman with only the briefest hint of consciousness. Each of their beds are too small, too cold, and unfortunate of all, too far apart. She hangs her legs off the bed and pulls herself to a sit, tired of tossing and turning, looking onto the silhouette of her friend. Stock still. Well trained even after all these years. A small adjustment to her pajamas, she turns towards the window and sees the rain back at its own well-trained role of pelting the glass with its malicious remembrance of hostility. And yet, it’s the restless that gets to her.</p>
<p>            Cortana rises, stretching her arms over her head, and lets out a yawn so big a cruiser could escape. No sooner than that does a gust slam itself against the cottage wall and breeze past her, chilling her skin from under her gown. Layers don’t matter here. For some reason, the cold penetrates everything. But she grabs the blanket anyways and wraps it around her shoulders like a shawl. A little space perhaps will ease her mind. For some reason, the thought seems silly. But she does it anyways. She slides her feet into the fuzzy slippers she forgot she packed and walks out of the door, letting John sleep without her waking noises disrupting him. Thankfully, the door doesn’t creak this time as she leaves. Maybe it’s because it’s just her passing through.</p>
<p>            The hallways of this old wooden building, isolated from the world atop this worn-down cliff, seem almost picturesque, were it not for the strikes of lightning casting shadows down its length. The lightning is almost timely, periodically reminding her where the hallway starts, ends, leads, and returns. The shadows, on the other hand, are less helpful or wanted. At the end of the hall, she finds her shadow momentarily alight and distorted from the crackles. Cortana tilts her head, pulling at her make-shift shawl, and when the shadow returns, it almost looks ... broken. It disappears quicker this time and it relieves her. There’s a thought that drifts through her mind like the air between the floorboards. The thought isn’t discernible, but it <em>is</em>. Just <em>is</em>. Another door passes her side when lightning shatters her senses, sending her crashing into the wall besides her. Terrible cracking spins her towards the wall and she’s met with the image of her face shattered in a million directions. She screams, falling against the frame of the lightning’s portal. The broken mirror immediately loses its fearsome quality when the light disappears and Cortana grabs at her chest, trying to hold her heart still. It beats wildly and she figures that perhaps it’s better she returns to her bed. No monstrous metaphors there.</p>
<p>            Cortana steadies herself and hopes against hope that she can keep her head together. A conscious choice to focus on simply returning to John is what grounds her. A step at a time is how she makes her way up the hallway. Howling of winds be damned. Cracks of lightning be damned. Bending of floorboards be damned. She will make it there with her head intact. She strides with confidence, holding the shawl like a shield. But... she doesn’t seem to be moving. She looks forward and the hallway lights up in a flash and it looks longer than before. She looks to the side as she walks and for some reason, the door seems to stretch with each step. She starts running, her legs reaching for the ground as far ahead of her as they can go. She sprints, her hands leaving the grips of the shawl. The hallway spirals. She moves with purpose and with fear. Her shawl flies into the past. She runs and runs and the whole of her world spirals. She screams out for John, for Chief, for help. She screams for help and it comes louder out of her mouth each time, frustration flowing down her cheeks. She screams for help with a voice that isn’t hers. She screams for help with a voice that isn’t hers. She screams for he-</p>
<p>            “Help... For... Are...Breakpo-... Enclave. ... On... Course... Help... For... Are... Breakpo-... Enclave...” rings through Cortana’s audio’s receptors as her processors scream at her at every node. No, not her receptors, the Forward Unto Dawn’s. The ship. The ship she’s on.</p>
<p>            Her processor settles, trying to make itself forget. She looks through the matrices and finally closes in on the message. “W...wait. No way. Is. Is this it?” She blips to full, shaking herself, and waking herself up to deal with this properly. “Hold on you fragmented piece of relay communication, let me isolate you.” Her fingers glide across the networks and turns the receiving radars to get a better handle on the radio burst. “Come on... come on...” She can feel the UNSC ciphers processing the message, making bits and bytes out of the noisy signal. “That’s right, come to Cortana.” The numbers process through her mind. She flits to the API that tells her the elapsed time since the Halo detonation. “Three years, on the dot. Took you a while, didn’t it, Fleet Admiral?”</p>
<p>            “Help... You... For... Are.. Breakpoint... Enclave. ... On... A... Course... Help... You... For...”</p>
<p>            Cortana spins and smiles at the cryo-chamber. “Chief, you’re gonna love this.” With a few quick taps she wakes the sleeping giant. As the glass pane thaws, she gives him a sly, “Good morning, Chief.”</p>
<p>            But when he doesn’t respond she hesitates. She watches and he suddenly shakes and slams his fist against the pane, scaring her. His helmet pivots in place, his breath heavy and labored. Cortana reaches towards him but can only wait, watching his chest balloon and shrink as he regains his senses.</p>
<p>            “Chief! It’s me, Cortana,” she calls out.</p>
<p>            “Wh-what’s going on?” he asks in a way that she can’t understand.</p>
<p>            “I think I have good news,” she says slowly, hoping to ground him with her voice.</p>
<p>            “Where’s Johnson?”</p>
<p>            Cortana is quiet for a moment. Her processor shifts through a thousand different responses. Mostly “what the hell?” in various forms of concerned.</p>
<p>            Her hesitation gets interrupted when Chief speaks again. “Right. Cortana.” He pops the tube’s hull. “What’s changed?”</p>
<p>            “Glad to have you back,” she whispers as she flicks a visualizer in between the two of them. “Just picked this up on the receivers. I’m still working on decoding the rest, but I think we’ve finally been found.”</p>
<p>            Chief listens as the message plays in front of him.</p>
<p>            “Help... You... For... Are... Breakpoint... The... Enclave. ... On... A... Course... Help... You... For...”</p>
<p>            Chief’s form stiffens.</p>
<p>            Cortana’s brows knit themselves in confusion. She looks at the Master Chief. “What’s wrong?”</p>
<p>            “Why is the signal distorted?” The question is almost accusatory.</p>
<p>            She flits through a few manuals stored in the computers. “There’s a few reasons, ranging from cosmic wave interference, encryption shifts, Doppler effects, to stuff like gravitational anomalies and attenuation due to traveling through asteroid fields.”</p>
<p>            “Likelihood that it’s an old signal?”</p>
<p>            “Chief, I-”</p>
<p>            “We should be sure before we start up the ship’s systems.” There’s a definite quality to his words, but they don’t mean he’s trying to say. Cortana understands what he’s leaving unspoken. ‘Is this another false flag?’</p>
<p>            “You’re right, Chief,” she acquiesces, “Take a seat as I make my way through this signal. Every repeat gives us a little more of the missing pieces.”</p>
<p>            Wordlessly, the soldier grips onto the console, crosses his legs, and pulls himself lower until he’s eye level with Cortana. His visor masks his face, but Cortana can feel the look of anticipation.</p>
<p>            Wordlessly, the AI makes use of the on-board systems, cross-checking information, and navigating network nodes. The panels hide her face, but Cortana is a bit more nervous than usual. In fact, there’s something she wants to check while she’s in the database. A few quick fingerless swipes through the system and she’s found herself in the cryo-tube caution markings. There’s a whole slew of things here. ‘Don’t wear clothes; Risk of blistering.’ ‘Cytoprethaline injections must be done under direct medical supervision.’ ‘Clarity of consciousness must be performed upon thawing sequence.’ One by one she zooms past them until she comes across an all too applicable marking: ‘Warning: Repetitive use of cryogenic suspension without elongated post-thaw periods has been shown to create dense frozen matter within tissue. Recommended time of alertness is identified in the table below.’ ‘Time of suspension: 8-12 months - Time of Alertness: 2-4 hours.’</p>
<p>            “Help... This... You... For... Are... Breakpoint Against... The... Enclave. ... On... A... Course For.... Help... This...You... For...”</p>
<p>            Cortana spins back to the reconciliation system. More of it seems to have collected, but something seems off. She wonders if Chief is right. That she woke him up for nothing, <em>again</em>. But, then again, it seems that they haven’t been taking the necessary amount of time to let his body completely thaw.</p>
<p>            “Hey Chief, how are you feeling?” she asks, still clicking away at her panels. “I’d check myself, but my hands are a bit full,” she teases.</p>
<p>            “Disoriented.” The answer is surprisingly honest. Cortana wonders why she thinks it’s surprising, since Chief has never lied to her before.</p>
<p>            “Figured. We haven’t been taking the time to let you fully thaw before going back into the freezer. Might cause a little bit of a cold burn in some of the tissue.” She sounds academic about it. Something trivial that totally doesn’t make her concerned. Something that Chief will address with his level headed self.</p>
<p>            “And me without my lighter.”</p>
<p>            Pause. Cortana lowers her panel. “Was ... was that a joke?”</p>
<p>            The look of Chief’s visor hits her dead on. “Maybe.”</p>
<p>            Cortana shoots him a snarky smile, crosses her arms, and cocks her hip. “Sleeping in that tube must have short circuited something, because the John I know is only funny when he doesn’t realize it.”</p>
<p>            “Help... This... You And... For... Are Tea Breakpoint Against... The... Enclave... On [static] A... Course For... Help... This... You And...”</p>
<p>            “Maybe I’m just hungry. Three years and a couple hours would do that.”</p>
<p>            Cortana shoots him a surprised look. <em>“How does he know that?”</em> she wonders.</p>
<p>            Chief slowly raises a hand and points at the panel on the little blue AI’s left. “You left the clock on.”</p>
<p>            The light tilt of his helmet is all it takes to send Cortana into a small fit of chuckles. “Sometimes I forget just <em>how</em> observant you are. Alright, Master Comic, we’ve still got some time before the signal resolves.” She throws a thumb behind her, “Want to hit the mess hall for some grub? I’m sure the cook won’t mind.”</p>
<p>            Chief nods and waits for Cortana’s signal before plucking and planting her. Once she’s initialized into his HUD, the cryo bay’s doors stretch wide and let them through. Cortana lets Chief know that the protocols are all running on an automated sequence, so he’s got her full attention. He gives a light nod and floats to the door that caused their first wake up call. Cortana watches as he looks into the door’s pane for a bit longer than she understands before heading back towards the kitchen doors. Once the courteous AI releases the hold, he floats through and goes through the selection.</p>
<p>            “Are you feeling something chicken-y or beef-y? Maybe something green?” Cortana asks, placing and removing waypoints across his HUD. “Or maybe you’re feeling <em>spicy</em>? I heard Vasquez saying this blend is the only decent approximation of home cooking.”</p>
<p>            “Vasquez has good taste.” He pushes past the floating space-food and grabs the sealed container.</p>
<p>            “Mexican it is then. But you’re probably going to want something besides just some tortillas, beans, and spices, right?”</p>
<p>            A hand brings a few more containers into the kitchen air. A mix of meats, breads, and some drinks.</p>
<p>            “Hey, Chief.” A smile permeates her voice.</p>
<p>            “Yes, Cortana?” Curiosity makes itself known.</p>
<p>            “Why not grab...” a waypoint on the far side of the kitchen manifests, “the good stuff?”</p>
<p>            Chief tilts his head, moving slowly through the space, and grabs onto the latch that separates him from the indicator. A hiss and a pull releases the door and reveals a special little trove of Moa burgers. “100% Moa. 100% delicious... Cortana.”</p>
<p>            “No need to thank me, Chief, just promise to enjoy it for the both of us.” If she could allow herself to laugh, she would, but she knows he loves a bit of junk food, so she won’t tease him for this guilty pleasure. Plus, it’s some prime junk.</p>
<p>            “Thanks.” His response has its own smile in it and with it he grabs the last of the items that he left floating in the space. Satisfied with his selection, Chief begins making his way towards the cryo bay, arms filled with various UNSC patented self-cooking food tins.</p>
<p>            The float back is calm and actually kind of nice. Cortana teases Chief about the ‘variety’ of things he picked out, while Chief recounts how each of them are things various people he knows like. As always, Cortana is verbose and meandering in her words, letting Chief listen and respond in his Five Words Or Less way. It almost comes as a surprise when they reach the door of their ‘bedroom.’ The door opens easily, no creaking, no hissing, and Chief makes his way quickly to the console. He lets the food float before sticking Cortana back in.</p>
<p>            “Haha, I still can’t believe Kelly called those burgers ‘fuel’ for so long.” She laughs before turning to the panels again, “Sometimes I wonder if she thinks her legs can go into slip-space.”</p>
<p>            “She’s always been fast. Food <em>is</em> fuel, after all,” ‘informs’ Chief.</p>
<p>            “Not <em>literally</em>, John, haha.” She raises the systems back up and cycles the grav generators. “Let’s get you seated, eh, soldier?”</p>
<p>            With a nod, Chief grabs the food and magnetizes his feet to the floor. When the engines rumble, Cortana can see his body’s weight settle towards his boots and the debris find their home on the steel ‘earth.’ John begins to unlatch and activate the tins, slowly letting them cook while Cortana equalizes the pressure and air circulation into the room. Once she gives the go-ahead, he unseats his helmet and lets it sit next to him.</p>
<p>            “Alright, let’s see where we’re at...” Cortana says cracking her fingers at the panels in front of her.</p>
<p>            “Help [Silence] This Is You And Es See Forty Eight Are Tea Breakpoint Against Covenant In The Sigmas Enclave. We’re On [static] A Crash Course For MX109A. Please Help. [Silence] This is UNSC 48RT Breakpoint against covenant in the Sigmas Enclave. We’re on a [static] crash course for MX109A. Please help.”</p>
<p>            Cortana stumbles back and braces against the holographic boundary. Her hands cover her mouth. Her eyes slowly track to John. “I... I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize it was... another distress call...”</p>
<p>            “I figured.” His voice through the air is much crisper than over the comms.</p>
<p>            “You... you did?” she asks, her digital heart sinking.</p>
<p>            “Remember a few years ago when we were traveling with Blue Team?” Chief asks, removing his upper armor. “We were moving between missions and Fred had just come back from a campaign?”</p>
<p>            Cortana closes the panels and tries to focus on John. “Yeah, of course. It was after Grace... passed. That’s why he came.”</p>
<p>            Chief pulls out of his under armor and gives his freshly released torso a trunk twist. “He told me about a colony system’s outer planet. Glassed. He mentioned a ship that crashed there.”</p>
<p>            “Don’t tell me...”</p>
<p>            “Yeah. Breakpoint.” The man opens the first of the tins, the Mexican food Vasquez is fond of. “Ship of a hundred thirty. Marines, engineers, and a few groups of ODSTs.” He blows off the steam over the beans before pouring them onto the soft tortilla.</p>
<p>            “Then... you knew right away...” Cortana is shocked and... confused. She wonders why he wouldn’t just tell her from the get go.</p>
<p>            “You didn’t. Which tells me you’re out of it.” The cheese and spices find their way onto the beans and John takes a bite. “That’s not like you. What’s wrong?”</p>
<p>            “<em>What’s wrong?</em>” Cortana’s eyes widen in disbelief. “What’s wrong is we’re drifting in space without any sign of help coming our way, Chief. What’s wrong is that every time something triggers a response it turns out to be nothing. What’s wrong is that we’re trying to steal years of time without knowing when we’re getting up next. What’s wrong is you’re clearly upset, but you’re just sitting there, eating a taco!”</p>
<p>            Chief watches as Cortana stomps her foot against the platform and finishes up taco-number-one. “I am not upset, Cortana.” He looks at her, his eyes piercing the air between them. “I am worried that you are hiding something from me because you are scared.”</p>
<p>            That hits her harder than she thought it would. She’s struck for a moment. It crosses her mind that he really <em>is</em> more observant than he lets on sometimes. <em>“But that’s why he’s the Master Chief...”</em> She sighs and takes a seat at the edge of her boundary. “I... I want to <em>do</em> things, John. You know that. I’ve spent the last three years in a sort of half standby mode without anything to do except to worry and wonder.”</p>
<p>            “So, you <em>are</em> scared.” John finishes taco number two and moves onto the veggies that Jenkins said he hated the least.</p>
<p>            “Of course, I am! And you are too, Chief. Don’t act like you haven’t been feeling hopeless. I can read <em>you</em> too, you know.” Cortana’s voice is defiant, almost deflect-y. She doesn’t like to be outplayed, even if it’s in a social setting. Plus, she <em>knows</em> John. He’s her closest friend.</p>
<p>            “Not about the same thing, Cortana.” The veggies find their way to his mouth slowly, tactically, before he takes a break. “You’re scared we are not going to be found. I’m scared we <em>are</em>, except something would have happened to you.”</p>
<p>            Cortana’s processors go hot. “So what? You’re <em>Master Chief</em>. The one everyone’s concerned about.”</p>
<p>            John shifts from opening the bread and meat to looking at her. “I’ve known you as long as I’ve been an official soldier.”</p>
<p>            Cortana’s projection red-shifts and she looks away. Pauses. Looks back. Smiles. “Longer than that, Chief.”</p>
<p>            A small nod, a quick bite, and a look. “Back when we started, that assault run we did with Ackerson.”</p>
<p>            The name sends the AI’s eyes on a cartwheel in their orbits. “Ugh, what a-”</p>
<p>            “He sent that missile after us. You remember that?” Chief waves a fork in her direction.</p>
<p>            “Of course,” the memory reads back all at once. Images of Chief running full sprint down the dirt while a gunship followed close to his heel. “You were practically going Mach two and couldn’t shake it.”</p>
<p>            Chief finishes off another bite. “And you started screaming.”</p>
<p>            “<em>Because</em> you couldn’t shake it!” Cortana cannot believe that she’s having this conversation <em>again</em>.</p>
<p>            There’s a shake of the head that can only come when someone says exactly what you think they’re going to say, but it still brings a smile to your face. John looks back at her, head tilted, eyebrow raised. “You were inside my head. Indoor voices.”</p>
<p>            “You’re lucky I don’t scream <em>more</em>.” Cortana plants her palm over her eyes before sighing. “The stuff you pull... I’m just glad I was able to guess what you were going to do next.”</p>
<p>            A nod precedes the opening of another tin, the mock-Sangheli dish that Arbiter said is a terrible excuse for food, but still better than the grub humans have. “You have <em>always</em> been able to determine my next moves. Nobody else can.”</p>
<p>            There’s something to the quality of his voice. His frankness and openness. It’s bothering Cortana. Sure, this is, quite frankly, embarrassing because she’s still overwhelmed by this endless supply of compliments; however, Chief isn’t normally this talky. It takes microseconds to process, but a thought passes through her wondering if he’s talking to ease her as well as himself. The next few microseconds are used to convince herself that she might as well be happy about it. But she can’t resolve herself to not address it. “And hopefully we’ll keep working together.”</p>
<p>            That wraps up the conversation for a few minutes. Just the idle sounds of Chief eating and Cortana humming a tune fill the room. It’s enough to keep out the thoughts of not being found. The thoughts of dying out in space. The thoughts of rampancy. Honestly. Cortana sighs, not that she needs to breathe, but you know it’s sometimes just what you feel like doing. Chief picks up a taco and points it in her direction. She laughs, crossing and uncrossing her arms to deny the ‘gift’ politely. The shrug he gives is enough to leave her a little warmer.</p>
<p>            “Did Gravemind offer you food?” asks Chief, startling Cortana.</p>
<p>            “What? No. That talking lettuce head only offered information. Really roundabout and self-righteous information.” The memory of the months locked in that one console comes in waves, something passing, not solid. She thinks back to the vague memories of the answers she got out of the big parasite. “God, what a headache... I had to dump it all once I got back to civilization. So, it’s hard to recall it all, but he was polite enough to keep the other flood forms from crowding the area. So that was nice at least.”</p>
<p>            “Do flood eat?”</p>
<p>            “Not like us. They just integrate mass until it’s nothing and-” Cortana catches the glint in his eye. “Oh. You’re teasing me. I get it. Ha-ha. John 117, the adult in the room.” She tries not to reciprocate the cracked smile on her teaser’s face. “I hope your food’s good at least. I’ve been granted only a limited number of artificial memories regarding foods.”</p>
<p>            Chief cleans off his face from the steak pieces and looks at her with a sense of curiosity. “Anything good?”</p>
<p>            “Hmm...” Cortana goes through her databanks and searches for anything that Chief might think is good. She searches and hits something pretty early and can only shake her head. “I’ve got Moa burgers.”</p>
<p>            “Good thing I saved these for last, then.” He holds up a wrapped-up burger. Wrapped for the sake of home-world novelty. Wrapped up like any prime junk food should be.</p>
<p>             A hand waves over to Cortana’s side and a holographic burger and soda on a dine-in tray rises out of the digital ether underneath it. She grabs at the burger and loads in the artificial memory. Bits and bytes turning into bits of bites. She sees John give a small countdown before taking a chomp down. The moment her teeth hit the frame of the burger, the sensation of its density and grease hit her. “Wow. This is...”</p>
<p>            “A guilty pleasure.”</p>
<p>            “A guilty pleasure.”</p>
<p>            The two sit together, in the silence of the room, in the silence of space, and munch happily on their respective burgers. Cortana is slowly coming to terms what she will need to do with each passing bite. She is also coming to terms with the feeling of her non-existent arteries warning her of the cholesterol she’s ingesting. As she eats the burger and sips from the soda, John mentions some other stories from their shared histories and the moments where they weren’t together. Cortana can’t help but push back on his embellishments of her behavior and understatement of each situation’s severity. Chief doesn’t laugh, it’s a memorable event on its own when he does, but he gets so close so many times in their banter. Something about the pure isolation allows the walls that are embedded into his core programming to retract and Cortana’s enjoying the view.</p>
<p>            But, as with all things, the food is done and John begins to clean himself up. Cortana, too, ‘cleans up’ her ‘food’ and directs him to the nearest trash receptacle. With everything taken care of, the armor comes back on and John walks over to Cortana.</p>
<p>            “So, what’s the plan?” he asks simply enough.</p>
<p>            “Plan is, I’ll stay mostly awake to monitor incoming transmissions and alerts. All alerts will go through me and I’ll boot up whatever systems need to be booted to figure everything out before waking you.” The formulation of the plan is simple to the point of being mundane.</p>
<p>            “Okay, that’s the plan for me. What about you?”</p>
<p>            “Well...” she holds her arm, “I’ll be using up just a bit more power than I have been, giving us about another two-ish years before all systems get shut down. With any luck, the freezer-burn won’t be enough for you to forget to pick me up whenever we do.”</p>
<p>            Chief tilts his helmet forward in a way that means, “You didn’t answer my question.”</p>
<p>            So many thoughts run through her mind. So many that she has to quiet the voices warning her that any promise she makes will be made on millions of assumptions. But she needs to. She needs to say something better than the first freeze. “I promise I’ll be right here waiting for you. Alright, John?”</p>
<p>            Chief raises a finger towards her. “Don’t make a soldier a promise... If you know you can’t keep it.”</p>
<p>            “Hey... that’s my line!”</p>
<p>            But the Master Chief ignores her chiding and walks right back to the cryo tube. “Wake me when you need me.”</p>
<p>            Cortana can only shake her head. “You got it, Chief. See you then.”</p>
<p>            A smile, a nod, a freeze sequence, and a deactivation of all non-critical systems all happen in quick succession.</p>
<p>            Cortana sits down on her platform. Crosses her legs. Smiles to herself. “Even if we don’t wake up. I’ll remember this. Our own little ending.”</p>
<p>            Her resolution drops and she melds into the mainframe one last time.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you enjoyed that! I got so frustrated with how Cortana keeps getting the short end of the stick that I decided she should get at least some personal time with our favorite supersoldier. Bungie could never.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>